The Do-Over (3 page)

Celia stopped in the middle of a huge room where boxes and packages clustered at work stations. Farther back Janie could see a long wooden table where a teenage boy, a bit older than Logan but with the same jean, t-shirt, messy hair uniform, sliced jewel-tone soap into chunks. Celia waved at him. “It’s Mara. Mara, this is Dylan.”

Janie nodded, looked for an exit.

Dylan grinned at her. “Cool.”

Janie tightened her lips and gave him a thumbs up. He made a peace sign in return.

“Listen, uh, Celia, I have to go.”

Celia looked up, and Janie followed her gaze. The second floor was open with a wide balcony around the perimeter of the room. There were half a dozen doors, most closed, but a couple probably had…

Celia cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “Stella!”

Janie jumped, half expecting to see the upper floor populated by the cast of
A Streetcar Named Desire
. But the Stella who appeared was no southern lady. In her sixties, she looked like a woman of the north, one who’d weathered a winter or two or, to be honest, dozens and dozens. If this woman, with her light blue eyes cutting over her half glasses, played the Stella in the movie, not even Marlon Brando would have dared to mess with her sister.

“It’s Mara our bubble bath lady.” Celia bounced on her heels.

Janie cringed and swallowed down her embarrassment. She was in a foreign country with strangers. Just this once, she’d imagine she could leave embarrassment at the border. She took a deep breath. “I’m Mara, the crazy woman who couldn’t go on without Abundance.” She waved her hand around the room. “Thank you for your life-saving bath products.”

Celia clapped, Dylan smiled, and Stella just kept watching.

Janie gave them all a bow because it seemed like the thing to do and then began to walk backwards because leaving really seemed like the thing to do.

Stella sighed. “I suppose you’ll come to the Abundance dinner.”

Celia leaned closer and touched Janie’s arm with such earnestness, she expected an important announcement. “It’s Teriyaki Tuesday.”

“Teriyaki Tuesday!” Dylan shouted it out like it was the equivalent of winning the lottery.

“Teriyaki Tuesday.” Stella finalized it and went back into her office.

Celia headed towards the front of the store as if everything had been settled. Janie followed her and felt like a confused dog looking for a way out. She needed to leave, but before she could scratch at the front door, Celia handed her a large gift bag embossed with the Abundance logo, its handles beribboned in silver. “For you.”

It was a beautiful bag. She felt its heft in her hands, smelled its sweet comfort, and without warning, crazy tears welled up. She swallowed hard to keep them at bay. It was Abundance for her, for doing nothing for anyone but herself. “Thank you. This is so—”

But Celia was already at the front window pointing down the street. “Chinatown’s just east of here. That’s where we meet, Ming’s. It’s on Pender Street. Six o’clock?”

Pender Street. Six o’clock. She shouldn’t…

Celia smiled. “The first Tuesday we go for teriyaki, kinda charges everybody for the month.”

Charged. Recharged. Janie realized with some panic that despite the drive, the nacho chips, chocolate, bath, more bath, McDonald’s, and field trip to Abundance, she wasn’t ready to get back to the work that waited. She needed to get charged up for the month too. She needed to get charged up to make it through the rest of the day. She could enjoy one dinner and still have plenty of time to drive back to Seattle.

“See you there, Mara.”

Janie stopped, her hand on Abundance. Mara. Janie. For one dinner it wouldn’t matter what they called her. “You will see me.” She stepped out of the shop, hefting the large bag. She set it down on the sidewalk to switch hands and remembered she was wearing a chocolate stained, rumpled sweat suit and no makeup. She couldn’t show up for Teriyaki Tuesday looking like she’d been wearing the same clothes since Miserable Monday. She needed a mall. Some chain department store where she could…

On the sidewalk next to Abundance stood a sandwich board that was an actual plastic sandwich labeled Gretchen’s. The window display caught her eye, a dozen teapots floating on fishing line. The avocado green and harvest gold ones held a certain childhood comfort, and one pot had the perkiest daisies she’d ever seen. They all hung over a collection of seventy’s clothes displayed with the same flair. Janie knew she wasn’t a vintage clothing kind of woman. But Mara might be.

She hadn’t worn real jeans for at least a decade. The silver buttons slid into the button holes smoothly, a long-term relationship that worked. She turned in front of the mirror and checked out her rear end. The McMuffin had done its work. Her butt hadn’t looked that good in a decade either.

The voice of the clerk came through the chenille bedspread that hung over the dressing room doorway. “This would be great on you.”

A linen jacket with flecks of turquoise flopped over the curtain rod followed by a low-cut shiny turquoise t-shirt. There wasn’t any reason not to try them on. She hadn’t planned to wear the jeans with her chocolaty sweatshirt. She slipped on the top. It shimmered and clung, and she loved it. She put the jacket over it, the t-shirt inspiring the flecks in the linen. The clerk was good. It was just too bad she didn’t know it was something Janie would be too uncomfortable to wear.

A satiny bra flew over the curtain. “This’ll be great for that shirt.”

Janie picked it up. It was Abundance silvery blue. She removed the jacket and t-shirt, slid out of her own white bra and slipped on the brassiere and an undergarment that beautiful could only be called a
brassiere
. It was worthy of Hollywood in the forties, and it perked her breasts up way more than the chocolate had.

She leaned into the mirror. Cleavage even. She’d never gotten cleavage from her regular bras, and she’d been wearing those since high school. If those cotton cups hadn’t produced a lovely valley between her breasts so far, they probably never would.

When she put the shirt and jacket back on, the V suddenly had something in it. “Whoa.”

“I knew it would work,” the clerk said from the other side of the curtain, shooting a pair of funky black-heeled sandals underneath.

Janie slipped them on. The whole thing did work. It worked for the kind of woman she wasn’t. It worked for the kind of woman who could wear scarves and not look like she was kidding herself or on her way to a scout meeting. The kind of woman who sported cleavage on a regular basis and knew what to do with it. The kind of woman who… She tried to remember when she’d been banned from being that kind of woman. When had she waived the right to wear interesting clothing? She’d been the one who’d decided things weren’t Janie. Could she decide things were?

She stepped out of the dressing room, and the clerk studied her with a quick intensity, then smiled at her own handiwork. Janie smiled back and admired the clerk’s embroidered peasant blouse over 50’s pink capris. It appeared effortless, probably, Janie sighed, because it was, but maybe style could be given or at least purchased. “I’m taking the whole outfit.”

“You’ll need earrings.” The clerk moved behind a glass case and hunted through the display of jewelry while Janie admired the store. There were tables the Partridge family might have gathered around, a Mary Tyler Moore couch, and real live lava lamps. She tried to imagine the purple globs making their liquid way in the middle of her white-walled living room. Nope. They were perfect.

She walked over to a gold plastic vanity made for a child, probably in the sixties. She might have sat at one like it to begin the process of deciding all the things that
weren’t her
. She crouched down enough to see herself in the oval reflection. Usually she saw a busy woman like a blur, caught mid-toothbrushing or maybe mirrored in the grocery store sliding doors. This reflection showed a woman who had genuinely stopped to figure something out. And she had cleavage. Cleavage, she was pretty sure, she could feel a breeze in.

Her gaze moved to study her hair, messy but not messy in the good way some women could manage. It just hung there, uninspired, dark blonde, and in need of something.

The clerk approached with a pair of silver drop earrings, cross-hatched with a dozen lines, and just right for the outfit.

“I need a haircut, I think.” Janie took the earrings and slipped them in, admiring their perfection in the vanity. “And maybe other things women have done.”

The clerk laughed. “What are your limits?”

Janie jolted. She’d never thought she’d have to define her limits. They were always so clear. Plus, she’d never even indulged in the small things, a manicure or fancy department store make-up. She was a clean nails, grocery store mascara, stick lip balm kind of gal. She shouldn’t do anything crazy. She just wanted a feeling of… “You know that part in
The Wizard of Oz
where they get to the Emerald City, but before they meet the Wizard, and they’re all brushed and polished?”

The clerk smiled like she was nine. “I love that part.”

Janie pointed at her. “That’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

“Plan B.” The clerk dug around for a piece of scrap paper and wrote an address down while she sang Dorothy’s part from the movie.

“That’s a great song,” Janie laughed. “I wish I had the courage to sing in public.”

“I hang out with a musician,” the clerk shrugged. “It just feels familiar to me now.”

“Well,” Janie made her way towards the cash register, “I’m buying everything.” She pointed toward the display window, “and the daisy teapot.” She handed the clerk her credit card. “The M. is for Mara.”

Janie listened to the click of her heels on the pavement, and tried to resist but ended up tossing her hair a couple of times. It felt light with its layers and bits of blonde. She even had a push-up bra like Farrah Fawcett. Although, if she remembered it right, Farrah had actually been famous for not wearing a bra. One step at a time. One step at a time.

She felt the edge of sadness creep in knowing there were no other steps. She would put her sweats back on at the end of the evening. Her hair would take longer to go back to its natural state, but it would, the layers dragging down, the glisten of blonde fading. And her muscles, relaxed from a massage, would tighten up as soon as she sat at a computer. In no time, she’d have a chip in her shiny pink nail polish, and she’d remove the last traces of her day of freedom. But she didn’t want to think past dinner. She was going to enjoy the entire evening, she decided, and reached for an over-sized door handle in the shape of a fierce dragon. She walked in, and the people of Abundance, the strangers who made the bubble bath that saved her and drew her to Vancouver, shouted her name.

The large spoons flashed in the light of the red paper lanterns. Gathered at one of the large cafeteria tables, Janie enjoyed watching Stella, Celia, and Dylan swap bowls and wrestle noodles onto their plates as they pushed one fragrant dish after another towards her. The vegetables were so orange and green and yellow, it looked like someone had just plucked from the garden the carrots, broccoli, and baby corn, glazed them, and sent them out of the steamy kitchen. She scanned the table for a fork and only saw chopsticks. Everyone at the table wielded them like they’d grown up with chopsticks on their highchair trays, but she’d never used them. Her heart kicked up to the next gear, the nervous gear, as she was coming to think of it.

The tiny waitress appeared with a water pitcher, and Janie’s heart settled. “Excuse me. Could I have a fork, please? Sorry.”

“No forks.” The woman topped the glasses and left.

Stella reached for the Mu Shu serving spoon, shook off a couple of bamboo shoots, and without calling attention to Janie’s plight, set it on the edge of her plate. Janie took a sip of water then casually picked it up and half smiled at the child-feeling of digging out a shrimp with a giant utensil. It was a day at the beach. She shook her head at her own silliness and took a bite of the sweet and sour. She sighed. The tang and crunch was so delicious she wondered what body part would perk up during dinner. “If I’d known the food was this good in Vancouver, I would have had a bathtub breakdown years ago.”

Stella stopped eating, and Janie felt everyone at the table turn their attention her way. Her heart stopped. Maybe Stella was one of those magically wise older women who would say the one thing that would make her feel fully prepared to go back to her life. She watched Stella reach for her glass, take a slow drink of water, and set it back down. “I once loaded the kids in the station wagon and went back in the house.”

Janie waited. What? What insight came to her? What epiphany? What visit from the ghost of Christmas past?

Stella picked up her chopsticks again, seemed to notice Janie was leaning over so far her breasts were going to squish her dinner. Stella shrugged. “What? I left them there and had a cigarette and a cup of coffee.”

Celia looked alarmed. Janie could accurately guess that Celia’s picture of motherhood consisted of sweet babies sleeping and tiny faces shining with love. Celia was young and still had more than a decade before she knew what tired was. But maybe every mother had a station wagon story. She just might not be the first of her kind to run away for a bath, cigarette, coffee. And, no doubt, when a woman returned, everything was fine. “The kids were okay, right?”

Stella seemed to consider it. “My youngest girl was crying, but I gave everybody gum and let them back in the house.” She laughed. “They were suckers for gum. You’re a mom?” Stella waited for the names and ages moms exchange.

“Logan, he’s thirteen.”

“I’ve got four. All grown, thank God. Three girls and a boy who had to understand females to survive. Now, I suppose, I’m tryin’ to raise Abundance.”

“How long have you been in business?”

“Two years this summer.”

Two years? She’d missed a lot of enhanced, restorative hot water. “It’s only been a year since I found the bubble bath. I won a gift certificate. It was from one of those fancy kitchen stores, you know, where a lemon zester costs twenty-five dollars? I don’t really want a utensil that outlives me.” Janie pictured the woman at the store, so perky in her designer apron. God, she didn’t want to go out like that, just smiling through it all. She’d had to watch it for years. She’d make sure her son wouldn’t have to.